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The 8 Other People You Meet at Christian College

11) Missionary Kids

Do not even attempt to understand them. They are aliens in our midst, completely unaffected by the social constructs that shackle the rest of us. They spent their adolescence being homeschooled on an obscure Pacific island. They have been hardened by frequent childhood stateside trips to Assembly of God churches, sitting on the front pew and listening to their parents narrate the same slide show of digging wells and Bible classes in open air classrooms. They can speak fragments of 3 languages but do not recognize your pop culture references.

The male Missionary Kid will walk around campus barefoot.

The female Missionary Kid will ask your boyfriend on a date with you sitting right there and not understand why you get upset.

The male Missionary Kid will spend Saturday afternoon on the Quad with his soccer ball practicing tricks. For hours.

The female Missionary Kid will disappear for hours on end, missing nightly roll call and making all the RAs angry, only to show up with her acoustic guitar and announce she had been on a “prayer hike.”

12) The Dean of Students Snitch

She is always waiting with a sympathetic ear, but she is not your friend. She will pump you for the details of your various sins and code of conduct violations and Linda Tripp you to the Dean of Students before the sun sets. It is unclear what she actually receives out of this subterfuge.

Do not waste your time being angry with her; she will wash out of Christian college, spend a couple of years off the radar, then show up at the local state school with an ankle tattoo and one of those hatchbacks with a hundred bumper stickers of obscure political causes covering the back window. Legalism is exhausting, trick.

13) The Naked Guy

He is a master artist. The Christian college is his canvas. And the only color on his palette is balls.

Sorry, ladies. You likely won’t catch a glimpse of this species, as he is quite reclusive. He is a nocturnal creature, venturing out only in the relative safety of the after-curfew men’s dorm. He was raised a strict Presbyterian, homeschooled for a couple of years in middle school, then attended a strict Christian high school with uniforms. Now at Christian college, he is simultaneously exhilarated by the relative freedom of campus and terrified by the presence of so many Arminians, public schoolers, and people who listen to rap.

No one knows exactly how it began, but at some point this dude found it quite freeing to expose his spiritual gifts at unexpected times. Compounding the matter, his dorm mates found it hilarious, and this only served to encourage him. Now he is forever searching, forever waiting for a time to get his Garden of Eden on.

You know what could really liven this dorm meeting up? he ponders to himself. Yes, that’s it–MY BALLS.

How to welcome the new freshman across the hall? By mooning him! Of course!

Suitemates having a fight over a girl? No problem! I bet I can break the tension if I walk in doing The Helicopter!

You don’t want to know what The Helicopter is.

14) The Homeschooler

Generally harmless, unless you are caught in the vortex of their romantic attraction, which can be quite suffocating due to the absence of PG-13 movies and proms from their adolescent development. To gain their trust, approach them slowly, without making direct eye contact, and whisper Constitution-related factoids in their general direction. They will graduate with a degree in 3 years and immediately begin working in DC in the office of their Republican senator; best to be nice to them.

True story from JV Superstar: there was a homeschooled kid in my dorm at Bryan College in Tennessee, and his mother would come up to the dorm to check on him. One night while she was waiting in the dorm lobby she caught a glimpse of our resident Naked Guy in all his helicopterin’ glory, and that was the beginning of a very, very bad week for our dorm. The guys in the dorm didn’t put her son to death, but the vote was close.

15) The Token Progressive

We get it, Che, you’re not like everyone else. Acts 4 is a model for Biblical socialism, huh. Cool, whatever, we were just goin–It’s a direct repudiation of Randian Evangelicalism, huh. Sure, okay, but we were just–No, dude, we don’t want to subscribe to your blog–do you want anything from Taco Bell or not?

16) Youth Pastors

They are the boisterous masses wandering the campus in cargo shorts and flip-flops, jabbering away with great intensity about Biblical themes in Star Wars. They wear sunglasses around their neck in December. They major in vague-sounding programs like Christian Education or Youth Ministry, or even Christian Philosophy. They are inherently gifted at kickball.

They are almost always cheerful; they are dreamers, every one. They stay awake in the dorms in groups of three or four and build elaborate plans to change the world with the Gospel: one night an artistic collective, another night a web-based multimedia production company, another night like…a Facebook, but, like, that evangelizes people! No one ever takes notes, and by the next morning the slate is wiped clean, ready for another amazing idea to be born from the fertile cocktail of energy drinks and homework procrastination.

17) The Freshmen Orientation Lovebirds

Among the most sickening of all Christian college species. They just met in their freshmen orientation small group. That was 3 days ago. They have since fused into one indistinguishable blob of sappiness. They carry themselves with a sort of smirking, self-assured romanticism, as if their whirlwind courtship is reinventing love itself. When quarantined to their respective dorms at night, they speak of each other wistfully, as if they were lovers separated for years by continents and war.

They are easily spotted at distance, and therefore avoidable, because they do that thing where they hug as they walk and each put a hand in the other’s back pocket, and how is that not a violation of something, but he’s the son of one of the guys in the Business Office, he’s not going to get in trouble, what can you do.

18) The Hugger

She just saw you 24 hours ago. It doesn’t matter. She will track you down just as you both are about to walk into chapel. She will greet you with a big smile and a HOW ARE YOU?!?!?! and she’s kind of cute but she also gives off the Little Sister Vibe so it’s super confusing. She will wrap you up in a front hug, never a side hug, and she will squeeze you super tight and you can feel her lady blessings squishing against you and then your minor prophet turns into a major and then she walks into chapel and leaves you standing there and man, Christian college is so weird.